[CHAPTER XXI.]
THE SURPRISE.
So soon as the emotion caused by Don Pablo's prowess was calmed they began thinking about returning. The sun was rapidly descending in the horizon: the whole day had been spent with the exciting incidents of the chase. The Hacienda de la Noria was nearly ten leagues distant: it was, therefore, urgent to start as speedily as possible, unless the party wished to run the risk of bivouacking in the open air.
The men would easily have put up with this slight annoyance, which, in a climate like that of New Mexico, and at this season of the year, has nothing painful about it; but they had ladies with them. Left one or two leagues in the rear, they must feel alarmed by the absence of the hunters—an absence which, as so frequently happens when out hunting, had been protracted far beyond all expectation.
Don Miguel gave the vaqueros orders to brand the captured horses with his cipher; and the whole party then returned, laughing and singing, in the direction of the tents where the ladies had been left. The vaqueros who had served as beaters during the day remained behind to guard the horses.
In these countries, where there is scarce any twilight, night succeeds the day almost without transition. As soon as the sun had set the hunters found themselves in complete darkness; for, as the sun descended on the horizon, the shade invaded the sky in equal proportions, and, at the moment when the day planet disappeared, the night was complete. The desert, hitherto silent, seemed to wake up all at once: the birds, stupefied by the heat, commenced a formidable concert, in which joined at intervals, from the inaccessible depths of the forest, the snapping of the carcajous and the barking of the coyotes mingled with the hoarse howling of the wild beasts that had left their dens to come down and drink in the river.
Then gradually the cries, the songs, and the howling ceased, and nothing was audible save the hurried footfalls of the hunters' horses on the pebbles of the road. A solemn silence seemed to brood over this abrupt and primitive scenery. At intervals the green tufts of the trees and the tall grass bowed slowly with a prolonged rustling of leaves and branches, as if a mysterious breath passed over them, and compelled them to bend their heads. There was something at once striking and terrible in the imposing appearance offered by the prairie at this hour of the night, beneath this sky studded with brilliant stars, which sparkled like emeralds, in the presence of this sublime immensity, which only suffered one voice to be heard—that of Deity.
The young and enthusiastic man to whom it is given to be present at such a spectacle feels a thrill run over all his body: he experiences an undefinable feeling of happiness and extraordinary pleasure on looking round him at the desert, whose unexplored depths conceal from him so many secrets, and display to him Divine Majesty in all its grandeur and omnipotence. Many a time during our adventurous journeys on the American continent, when marching at hazard during these lovely nights so full of charms, which nothing can make those comprehend who have not experienced them, we have yielded to the soft emotions that overcame us. Isolating and absorbing ourselves within ourselves, we, have fallen into a state of beatitude, from which nothing had the power of drawing us.
The hunters so gay and talkative at the start, had yielded to this omnipotent influence of the desert, and advanced rapidly and silently, only exchanging a few syllables at lengthened intervals. The profoundest calm still continued to reign over the desert; and while, owing to the astonishing transparency of the atmosphere, the eye could embrace a horizon, nothing suspicious was visible.